How to prevent one of Talakeal's Gaming Horror Stories: PC Edition

[Talakeal]

Sounds very much in World logical to me.

You are alone on a ship on the ocean.

Since none of youc an fly or transform itno fish or whatever, this is the only way, and failing always should have consequences.

But overall it seems to me that for a first time DM, this is looking very good.

Good luck to you all that it stays that way!

Its not that the situation is bad; its just that the way the mechanics worked meant that it dragged on.

Basically, the ship had a condition track, every success moved it up one step, every failure moved it down one step, and it had to get ten points in either direction for the challenge to succeed / fail. And since we all had right around a 50% chance to succeed on any given skill test, we basically spent an hour just going back and forth around the middle.

Ask Brian. I'll suggest the counterpart to a "swear jar", that you drop a quarter into every time you do it; when it's full, you buy the group pizza.

Do I put a quarter in every time I answer a question at all or just every time I give a different answer than Brian?

I hadn't caught that your healer is also your frailest member.

Actually the necromancer is our frailest member, its just that he usually has either me or an undead protector to guard him.

You didn't like it. What about the rest of the table?

I didn't say I didn't like it, I said that it wasn't well designed and dragged on far too long as a result. For example, every failed roll took away a success, and since my character didn't have a 50% or better chance of succeeding at any of the skills that were required, the party would literally have been better off if I wasn't there.

Bob bitched about it, but then again Bob bitches about most things, so no surprise there.

We? Or you? Has the group taken on your mantra?

Mantra?

That's kind of a weird question though, and something I hadn't thought about. In this particular case I suppose it means I, as I am the one with the highest charisma and therefore do most of the negotiations with NPCs, but I haven't really thought about referring to the group as "we" before; it seems pretty common both in telling stories and at the table; for example one player will announce "we go back to the inn" and if none of the other players object it is assumed the party as a whole goes along with the plan.

Um, continuity?

So, have crops only been failing since the Druid disappeared? If so, in what way were the spirits misbehaving beforehand? Crazy questions: do forest spirits naturally misbehave, and could the misbehaving forest spirits have made the corrupt totem themselves? Assuming the answer to both is "no", then why would whatever caused the spirits to misbehave in the first place have allowed them to return to normal so easily?

That is strange, but I don't think its a plot hole. There is clearly more going on here than we have seen, for example we have no clue who actually killed the druid and created the totem, I assume we will investigate further next session.

So, did you get to make use of your downtime action advantage?

No. I dropped my character's wisdom and raised my charisma instead.

Edit: Forgot to respond to one question; in my system wizard's can save a spell slot by making an effect appear to come about through natural means, similar to coincidental magic in M:tA. It is a tactic used heavily by starting characters who don't have the spell slots to spare, or the strength to fight off an angry mob if someone takes offense at their magic.